2003 Annual Student Symposium - "Law and Human Dignity"

The transcendent dignity of the human person and the relation of that dignity to political freedom have long been prominent themes in American jurisprudence. The Constitution, for example, reflects the Framers’ views of human dignity and its implications, and courts throughout our history have further interpreted and applied these views. The concept has also played a role in statutory development. The criminal laws of the several States reflect common notions of human dignity in the ways they define and punish crime. The developing field of bio-ethics reflects a predominant concern with maintaining human dignity in the face of utilitarian temptations. At times, differing perspectives on this theme have caused conflict. Indeed, one of the principal causes of the Civil War involved inherently incompatible ideas about the innate worth and dignity of a certain class of Americans.

At the same time the term human dignity conveys a number of different meanings. Certainly in Roman Catholicism it includes connotations that neither atheists nor other religions, including Protestantism, necessarily share. The hope is that this conference will not only explore concepts of human dignity and the law, but also clarify confusion resulting from the same term being used to convey different meanings.